i think i used to call myself an artist, but now i just call myself a “creator of internet detritus” because that’s really all my work ever amounted to…
but maybe detritus can still be valuablemaybe some of it has artistic merit, or is even profound. maybe it’s no better than the piles of bad fanart which pad out the internet like the breadcrumbs in a meatloaf. but those all have stories too; they all had something deemed worth sharing, and i think about that a lot
my new paradigm for 2021 has been to try to see all artistic labor as innately beautiful.
i seem to have this pattern where i’m far more interested in making stuff than in bothering to establish myself as a “creator,” whatever that means. it’s fun to have ideas and execute them, and i find it hard to work up the motivation to make things unless i have some underpinning conceit to get across. which i guess results in the following implications:
- new works aren’t guaranteed to be in the same genre – or even the same medium – as the ones which came before.
- any fans (or interested parties) acquired from one work don’t follow over to future works; oftentimes, i don’t even bother telling them.
so in practice this process really does amount to dumping random shit on the internet just to see what happens. and while i want to believe that there’s value in these works existing for their own sake, it admittedly still hurts to not get much recognition for any of it – not just in terms of attracting a fandom, but also for attracting any friends.
there’s something that has stuck with me, which i believe i took from boltanski and thévenot’s On Justification, which is that those who are considered the most worthy are also those who give the most of themselves away. the responsibilities they have to others affirm their commitment to a certain social world, and over time these furthermore become evidence that they are able to deliver on this commitment. in contrast, freedom is associated with the realm of children, who have no responsibilities, no commitments, and who cannot be relied upon nor taken “seriously.”
i’ve been aware of this dynamic for years, and yet i’ve found it hard to shake my childishness. it’s hard to see an incentive to, either because of the risk of rejection, or conversely, the risk of acceptance then curtailing my freedom. i fear that not being able to follow my heart will lead to me creating unimaginative, derivative work down the line, but there’s an argument to be made that, in the absence of broader connections, the only thing this heart can produce is, fundamentally, detritus.
maybe i assume that, once i find the right place in life, then i’ll feel compelled to contribute to that place. once i find a group of people who like being with me and who are interested in what i make, then this will provide all the incentive i need to not be so driven by my whims.
but does such a place exist, for me or for anybody? or are we all faced with the challenge of finding a place that’s close enough to where we want to be and forcing ourselves to fit in the rest of the way?
it’s times like this when i think back to my childhood idol and self-determined fuckup, why the lucky stiff. in closure he writes about how programming never came naturally to him, but he tried to make it work for him. and i get the impression that he was always somewhat on the periphery of the ruby community, from his code contributions being localized to (exclusively?) his own projects, to his highly idiosyncratic programming book, to his whimsical (i.e. unprofessional) demeanor relative to everyone else. yet he tried to force his fit despite all that, though i’m grateful that he did so, if only for my own ill-fitting sake.
still… when i remember his final tweets talking about how futile his contributions really were in the grand scheme of things, it’s hard not to think that he was in the business of creating detritus too.
every time i finish something important, i take the work into my arms, cradle it gently, and whisper into its ear:
“i’m sorry. you didn’t deserve me.”
and i genuinely mean it. i do labor under the delusion that these works would be valuable to more than just myself, if only i had either the courage to solicit a group of followers or the willingness to find a genre that people like and stay in it.
this could relate to a long-held perspective where i treat works of art as akin to living beings which we have the capability of entering into relations with. the songs, writings, etc. which are most meaningful to me are almost like friends to me: they are here for me when i need them, and they’ve improved my life through our interactions. but this also goes the other way in that i see the works i’ve completed as children that i’m turning loose in the world so that they can go out and find new people to matter to.
except, by releasing these works as internet detritus, with no support from myself, it’s like i’m more-or-less condemning them all to death. and it sucks. they all deserved better, and i truly do wish i could’ve been better for their sake.
in the interest of wringing some moral out of all this, i’m also reminded of Purity and Danger’s classification of dirt as “matter out of place.” in that sense, the dirtiness of an object arises from its relationship with its surrounding context moreso than it does with anything inherent to the object itself. we don’t think of our shoes as dirty when we’re walking around outside, but when stepping into someone else’s house we become aware of them as “being dirty,” for instance.
so then, if we wanted to define “internet detritus,” we could say that a work becomes internet detritus when it lacks a more relevant context to us. when it’s just something we see as we’re milling about online, before our mind quickly casts it aside as irrelevant. and what is the modern internet if not a detritus machine, requiring us to wade through mountains of trash in order to find one or two leads that might be worth investigating further?
in order for detritus to escape this fate, it must be “put into place” by some mechanism or another. yet contextualization of a work is not a singular action, akin to putting one’s shoes away; rather, it requires the continual putting-into-place of that work… perhaps akin to repainting a house. it’s a process; it’s maintenance, and should nobody else be willing to take up that task then it’s left to the artist.
and i guess i have little desire to engage in this process since the artwork already has meaning to me, and i feel like it already contains the story that i wanted to share. what more is there to say? what more context is there to provide? shouldn’t it already be able to stand on its own? even though my head now tells me that it doesn’t work that way, i’m still unwilling to give up my freedom in order to perform the maintenance work necessary for keeping something from becoming detritus. which might be selfish, i know.
still, much like one who frames their vices as virtues, part of me wants to embrace the creation of detritus as intrinsically worthwhile, since it opens up the possibility for recipients to put these works into place for themselves. one of the most rewarding parts of exploring the internet has been finding works that are on the verge of being forgotten and offering them a place inside my heart and life. and deep down i hope that my works can inspire that same desire in someone else too: the desire to scuffle about in the detritus and return with the feeling that what they found is uniquely theirs… because it just might be.